


Pass the Pulse

by miss_begonia



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-02
Updated: 2012-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-30 12:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_begonia/pseuds/miss_begonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His hair is too light and he is too fat but he has a name, now, for what is wrong with him. He wants to say it, over and over again, until it feels natural. He wants to tell everyone. He wants people to know.</p>
<p>He doesn’t want anyone to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pass the Pulse

_if you say hide, we'll hide_  
  
  
Adam is fourteen.   
  
He is fourteen and scared, standing in his bedroom in front of the mirror with no shirt on. His freckles trace a frightened path down his chest, scattered like dust across his shoulders.   
  
 _Fairy dust_ , his mom used to say.  _From where the fairies gotcha._   
  
Adam sucks in his stomach and stares at his reflection and thinks:  _FAG_ .  
  
It feels good to think it. It would feel better to say it. He reaches out and presses one hand against the mirror, fingers smudging the glass. He wears a silver band around his thumb, bought at the mall on a whim because he likes how it feels when he twists it round.   
  
His hair is too light and he is too fat but he has a name, now, for what is wrong with him. He wants to say it, over and over again, until it feels natural. He wants to tell everyone. He wants people to know.  
  
He doesn’t want anyone to know.  
  
  
 _let's dance to the song  
they're playin' on the radio_  
  
  
Adam is twenty-seven.   
  
He watches Drake inhale, a curl of smoke misting across his lips like an invitation. Drake isn’t paying attention to him, all his energy focused on his cigarette. The cool sheen of moonlight coats his arms, and the air smells like nutmeg and tropical flowers.  
  
Drake has the most incredible bone structure. Sometimes when Adam looks at him he wishes he had some kind of artistic talent so he could paint him looking like he does right now: half shadow, half glimmer, skin smooth and pale.   
  
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Adam says.  
  
“The song is good,” Drake says, as if Adam asked. But Adam didn’t ask anything at all.  
  
“I know,” Adam says. “I know it’s good.”  
  
Drake reaches out and traces one finger over Adam’s palm like he’s going to try to read his future. Drake believes in things like that: fortune-telling and voodoo and fate. Adam believes in the stars and feng shui and ghosts, but mostly he believes in people – in ability, and practice, and work, and love.  
  
“People will love it,” Drake says.  
  
Adam knows he’s saying it because it’s the right thing to say, because it’s expected. Drake is awesome like that – easy to read, simple to understand.   
  
He lets Drake trace his hand, fingertips light and soft.   
  
He thinks:  _This, too, will pass._  
  
  
 _let's sway  
while color lights up your face_  
  
  
Adam is twenty-four.  
  
“Hold my hand.”  
  
He has only known Brad for ten minutes. Brad doesn’t seem that concerned about this.  
  
Adam takes Brad’s hand. It’s cool and a tiny bit moist. Brad’s shoulders are bare and covered in purple glitter, and he shimmers under the hazy lamp light. He resembles some kind of fairy creature, a sprite, a living, breathing, first grade arts and crafts project.   
  
His friends told him there would be people like Brad at Burning Man, lots of people like him, drifter-druggies giving away love for free.   
  
Adam is fairly certain there is no one like Brad at Burning Man.  
  
“Do you believe in destiny?” Brad asks.   
  
Brad’s eyes are milky brown. Fireworks crackle and then boom overhead. Nearby Adam can hear someone singing and playing a violin.  
  
“I don’t know,” Adam says.   
  
“You don’t know a lot of things, do you?” Brad says, smile tipping his lips, and Adam would be offended except for how his whole world is soft and pliable and bright, and he can’t be angry because he’s laughing.  
  
“You don’t know me,” Brad says. “That means there are a lot of things you don’t know.”  
  
“I’d like to know you,” Adam says, and squeezes Brad’s fingers, once, twice.  
  
  
 _if you say run, i'll run with you_  
  
  
Adam is twenty-seven.   
  
The moment Ryan Seacrest announces the winner of  _American Idol_  is the longest five seconds of Adam’s life. He can see Simon at the judge’s table, looking typically relaxed and unconcerned, and Paula, eyes bright and filled with pre-emptive tears. He can feel Kris, beside him, shaking. Kris is shaking. He didn’t think Kris wanted this. He should learn not to assume.  
  
He should learn not to expect anything.  
  
When they call Kris’s name he has a moment of disconnect. He splits and fragments. He sees himself at age five, performing a song from Annie wearing his new three-piece suit. He sees himself at ten, doing community theater. He sees himself in chorus, and with the jazz choir, and at club shows in vinyl pants. He sees himself on stage in feather headdresses, watches his wings glint and glitter under too bright lights, feels sequins chafe his fingertips.  
  
He thinks,  _Kris deserves this_ . He wants to believe it.  
  
“B-but Adam –“ Kris starts to say, and Adam doesn’t hear the rest because the roar of the crowd drowns him out.  
  
Adam pulls him into an embrace. Kris smells like Old Spice and sweat, like things that are not allowed, like picnics by the lake with friends on Sunday afternoons. Adam knows he can’t hate Kris, because it’s impossible to hate someone you love so much.  
  
“You did it,” Adam says. Kris is still in shock, but he’s stopped shaking. He slumps a little into Adam’s embrace, lets Adam hold him up.  
  
“You have to sing the song now,” Adam tells him, smug and a tiny bit evil, and Kris tips his head back and laughs.   
  
  
 _because my love for you  
would break my heart in two_  
  
  
Adam is twenty-six.  
  
He does not want to have this fight again.  
  
“You aren’t listening to me,” Brad says, but Adam is listening. He always listens, even when it hurts, even when it makes him want to scratch out his own eyes. He listens like the masochist he is, because what Brad says never changes.  
  
“I can’t go out, I’m working tomorrow, I can’t—“  
  
“You’re not working until  _three_ ,” Brad whines. “We won’t be out that late, it’s—“  
  
“But we will,” Adam says. “We’ll be out until the early morning, and I’ll feel like shit all day tomorrow, and I – I can’t do this anymore, I’m not—“  
  
“You’re an old man, I get it,” Brad says.   
  
He’s shirtless, and an angry flush paints his shoulders and neck. Adam wants to grab him and hold him down, kiss him until he gasps, fuck him until they both don’t care anymore.  
  
“I’m not—“Adam starts to say, but Brad’s eyes are slits and his hands are fists, and anything he says will feed that fire. Adam doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to have this fight again.  
  
Adam doesn’t know how to say it:  _I’ve changed. I’m growing up._  
  
“You’re right,” Adam says. “I’m an old man.”  
  
The slam of the door feels inevitable, an exclamation point at the end of a command.  
  
  
 ___let's sway  
sway through the crowd to an empty space_  
  
Adam is twenty-seven.  
  
Kris is asleep on his shoulder, slumped over in the bus seat and breathing heavily through his mouth. Adam knows he should move him away, push him off, but Kris is so warm and peaceful, and there’s not many places to go on a tour bus.  
  
“Owned!” Adam hears Anoop shout from somewhere in the back, where an epic Guitar Hero tournament is currently taking place. There’s some derisive laughter, followed by assorted random insults. Adam moves his shoulder and feels Kris’s hair tickle the skin of his arm, soft.  
  
“Mmm,” Kris hums, and his eyelids flutter.   
  
Adam thinks:  _I want to kiss you_ . He doesn’t, but he thinks it.  
  
“What’s up, Sleeping Beauty,” he says instead. It’s the safe kind of flirtation, come on cloaked in cute irony.   
  
Kris wakes up slowly, hand gripping Adam’s wrist, sleepy smile playing across his lips.  
  
“M’sorry,” Kris mumbles, and rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand, then squints.  
  
“Don’t be sorry,” Adam says.   
  
That’s the word he always hears in his head around Kris.  _Don’t._  
  
“You’re very comfortable,” Kris says, pushing himself upright.   
  
“Because I’m soft, right?” Adam asks.  
  
Kris gives him a fierce look. “There is no right way to answer that question.”  
  
Adam pouts.  
  
“Stop being such a  _lady_ ,” Kris says, and Adam punches him in the arm, hard enough to make Kris groan while he laughs.  
  
  
 _let's dance for fear  
your grace should fall  
let's dance for fear tonight is all_  
  
  
Adam is nineteen.  
  
His stomach rolls with the shifts of the sea, but he knows it’s not motion sickness. Adam’s never been motion sick in his life. This is pure nerves, a cocktail of adrenaline and fear, a cruel twist in his gut as his mind mantras  _this was a mistake a mistake a mistake._  
  
Singing on a cruise ship had seemed romantic, the type of life experience made for 1940s Hollywood movies starring Humphrey Bogart. Adam could see the world, sing for his supper, be a true artist – because why the fuck did he need theater classes and trust falls and vocal warm-ups when he could be out here doing this, just  _being_ ? Why did he need to prepare for what he was already ready to do?  
  
But this boat is no starship. It feels more like a ship of fools, and Adam is captive. He scratches one nail along the railing and misses home, misses his mom and her tilted smile, Neil and his stupid impressions and corny jokes, his dad and his even-tempered wisdom. He misses knowing where he is when he wakes up in the morning. He misses land.  
  
He thinks of his mom and how she held his hand and said,  _Whatever you want to do, honey, we can’t stop you. You’re grown up now._  His parents had split and his family was in shards and yeah, maybe there were extenuating circumstances. Maybe this wasn’t 100% about his art, but it was about something. It wasn’t some whim.   
  
The moon is full and heavy overhead, silver-white, and the air smells like salt and the fried food they’re cooking in the restaurant below. In a few minutes, Adam has to go downstairs and be all alone up there on stage. There were times in high school when all Adam wanted was that – a stage of his own. Now he’s not so sure.  
  
“And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon,” Adam murmurs, his own voice breaking through the still night air.   
  
He feels a breeze kick up, tickling his ears. He thinks:  _the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon._  
  
  
 _let's sway  
you could look into my eyes  
let's sway under the moonlight  
this serious moonlight_  
  
  
Adam is twenty-five.  
  
He is in love.  
  
He is in love with Brad and his silver-tipped eyelashes and his rolling hips, liquid on the dance floor, swaying and twitching to the pulsing beat. He is in love with the simulated moonlight, and the slick sweat on Brad’s collarbone, and the way he bites his lip and looks up at Adam with shining brown eyes filled with laughter. He is in love with this town – L.A., the city of angels, fallen angels, a place populated with shimmering boys wearing wings – and he is in love with tonight, and dance, and the stutter of his heartbeat as he tries to keep up.  
  
“I’m in love with you,” he shouts at Brad, but the music is thundering and Brad can’t hear. He wrinkles his nose and leans forward and says, “What?”  
  
Adam pulls him close and presses their bodies together, feeling Brad melt into him. He wants him so much, and yet he wants nothing more than this.  
  
He realizes he doesn’t need Brad to hear, because it’s redundant – tonight, locked up tight in this love embrace, Brad must know. He must know already.  
  
 ___if you should fall  
into my arms  
and tremble like a flower_  
  
Adam is seventeen.  
  
He is watching a boy with narrow shoulders and deep brown hair and friendly eyes pile food onto his tray in the lunch line. Adam doesn’t know this boy’s name, only that he sees him every day in the cafeteria, that their paths cross for thirty seconds every day, and every day Adam looks forward to it.  
  
Adam is taller than this boy, having hit his growth spurt last year and now standing over six feet. He thinks he’s still too heavy, pudgy around the middle. He wears his pants loose to give the impression that he’s losing weight, even though he never does, no matter how little he eats.  
  
He’s in the musical again this year and he has the lead, but he knows this boy will never see him sing. He’s not the type to go to the musical, Adam thinks. Not unless he gets dragged by his baby sister or something – does he even have a sister? Adam doesn’t know anything about his family, can’t really imagine him outside of this cafeteria and its smells of sweet cooked carrots and meatloaf, underlayed with the sharp scent of cleanser.  
  
Except for how that’s a lie. Adam has imagined him laid out on his bed, shirt stripped open to his navel, gasping under Adam’s hands. He’s imagined him with his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth open as Adam touches him, kisses him quiet, swallows the soft sounds he’d make. He’s imagined doing things to him he’s only ever seen on the internet, things that made him hard but also confused him, made him feel uneasy in the pit of his stomach. He tries not to imagine these things but they run through his mind anyway, a ticker tape of naughty, unsavory fantasies that Adam can’t share and can’t shake.  
  
Some nights Adam lies awake in his bedroom and imagines being somewhere no one knows him, somewhere he could reinvent himself, dye his hair, wear a costume all day long. He imagines being happy and having friends who understand this, who understand what Adam doesn’t even understand yet.   
  
He imagines being unafraid.


End file.
